DNA-YFVax: A DNA-based vaccine platform for tailoring of live attenuated virus vaccines for human and veterinary use

Live attenuated vaccines (LAV) (such as against, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus and yellow fever) save annually millions of lives. However, the production of LAV is cumbersome (cell cultures or embryonated chicken eggs) and a cold-chain is needed for storage and transport, as a consequence the vaccines do often not reach populations in poor and remote regions. We developed a novel DNA-based vaccine technology that allows to design cheap and easy to produce LAVs that are highly thermostable. A proof-of-concept was demonstrated for yellow fever (YF). In animal experiments, our YF DNA vaccine (DNA-YFVax) proved at least as efficient as the commercial (difficult to produce and thermo-labile) vaccine. This safe and highly efficacious DNA-YFVax (as well as a similar Japanese encephalitis DNA vaccine) will be used to develop strategies to increase the efficiency of vaccine delivery in the skin and to optimally induce the immune response. The insights thus obtained will next be used to validate the efficacy in relevant target species. The data of this study will be essential for further pre-clinical development (both for human and veterinary use) of the technology .

Keywords:platform, DNA, live-attenuated, BAC (bacterial artificial chromosome), vaccines

Disciplines:Microbiology, Systems biology, Laboratory medicine